Why Oz Should’ve Paid Less Attention to the Man Behind the Curtain

As anyone paying attention to pop culture in recent years has probably noticed, we find ourselves in a time when beginnings apparently hold more interest than endings, and going backward seems preferable to moving forward. How else to explain the swath of prequels and reboots that have appeared in recent years, from X-Men: First Class and Prometheus to The Amazing Spider-Man and Man of Steel? Cue today’s release of Oz The Great and Powerful, director Sam Raimi’s prequel to L. Frank Baum’s original 1900 novel The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, about the transformation of the nebbish Oscar Diggs (James Franco) into the aforementioned Wizard.

Although the latest Oz arguably owes more to Victor Fleming’s 1939 movie adaptation, The Wizard of Oz, the official synopsis of the movie indicates Raimi might have missed the point of Baum’s original story, describing a narrative arc where “Oscar transforms himself not only into the great wizard but into a better man as well.” While themes of redemption and personal growth are the stuff that movies are made of, it’s a story that seems very much at odds with the character of the Wizard as he appears in both the books and the previous film.

That Wizard, after all, was far from a hero; instead, he was a man struggling to live up to the expectations of the “Great and Powerful” leader of the kingdom of Oz and preferring to hide behind illusion and (self-) mythologizing instead of facing the world as he actually was. Furthermore, when finally revealed for who and what he really was, he dealt with it skipping town and leaving the kingdom in the hands of a Scarecrow, of all people. In Baum’s later The Marvelous Land of Oz, the Wizard is a deeply flawed character at best, especially after the revelation that he was responsible for the former Wicked Witch of the North’s imprisonment of Ozma, the true ruler of Oz.

Telling the story of Oscar Diggs becoming a “better man” is at best an odd choice and, at worst, an intentional misreading of Baum’s original Oz stories. Not only does it seemingly suggest that at some point after the new movie Oz’s personal journey toward self-improvement reverses itself, but his very gender runs counter to the spirit of the books.

As Christy Masters explained in a wonderful piece earlier this week, the original Oz stories were quietly — but firmly — female-led works, subverting the typical movie standard with protagonists were almost always young women and male characters more generally relegated to sideline and sidekick roles. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, despite its title, firmly sits within this framework, with Dorothy as the capable mover and shaker and the eponymous Wizard as little more than an ineffectual bumbler.

There are, of course, box office-friendly reasons to push Oz as the central figure of Oz; the very idea of putting a female lead in a movie that cost an estimated $200 million probably made some studio executives very nervous indeed, given the traditional — if somewhat flawed — logic that male-led movies with bring in audiences of all genders, while female-led movies won’t translate into male moviegoers. (And the presence of James Franco in the title role doubtlessly didn’t hurt either.)

But it’s a choice that makes Oz less true to its roots, and ultimately less interesting as a result. If, as tracking suggests, the movie is successful enough to kickstart a new Oz movie franchise, we can only hope that the next installment gets back to the core values of the source material, and reminds viewers what made Oz such an exciting destination for readers and fans in the first place.